Adult

The first target is Dallas, Texas. A deadly nerve gas called New Archangel is unleashed upon the City of Angels, claiming innocent lives, spreading nationwide panic, and fueling global fears of another attack. In the icy reaches of rural Alaska, special agent Jericho Quinn is enlisted to hunt down the man who created the bioweapon --- a brilliant Russian scientist who is trying to defect and hiding in the Alaskan wilderness. But time is running out. The scientist is beginning to lose his mind to dementia. If Quinn doesn’t find him before the Russians do, the entire western seaboard and beyond will feel the wrath of New Archangel --- and darkness will fall upon the earth.

The mystery of Athens is simple: how did a tiny community of 200,000 souls or so manage to give birth to towering geniuses across the range of human endeavor, create one of greatest civilizations in history, and lay the foundations of our own contemporary intellectual universe? Although its story is less well known than that of Rome, the allure of Athens would go on to impact Alexander the Great, the Romans, as well as the Founding Fathers. The Athenians laid the foundations of the house in which we live today, and Anthony Everitt brings its story to life.

Along the River Thames, the body of a woman has been discovered chained to a stone post and left to drown. “The Bride in the Tide,” as the London press gleefully dubs her, has the Peculiar Crimes Unit stumped. Why wouldn’t the killer simply dump her body in the river as so many do? Arthur Bryant wonders if the answer lies in the mythology of the Thames itself. Unfortunately, the venerable detective seems to be losing his grip on reality. John May fears the worst, as Bryant starts hallucinating that he’s traveled back in time to solve the case. As more bodies are pulled from the river’s depths, May and the rest of the PCU find themselves in over their heads.

In 1940 Edmund Wilson was the undisputed big dog of American letters. Vladimir Nabokov was a near-penniless Russian exile seeking asylum in the States. Wilson became a mentor to Nabokov and their intimate friendship blossomed over a shared interest in all things Russian. But then came Lolita, and suddenly Nabokov was the big (and very rich) dog. Finally the feud erupted in full when Nabokov published an unreadable literal translation of Pushkin’s famously untranslatable verse novel Eugene Onegin. Wilson attacked his friend’s translation in The New York Review of Books. Nabokov counterattacked in the same publication. Back and forth the increasingly aggressive letters volleyed until their friendship was reduced to ashes by the narcissism of small differences.

For Will Schwalbe, reading is a way to entertain himself but also to make sense of the world, and to find the answers to life’s questions big and small. In each chapter, he discusses a particular book and how it relates to concerns we all share. These books span centuries and genres --- from STUART LITTLE to THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, from DAVID COPPERFIELD to WONDER, from GIOVANNI’S ROOM to REBECCA, and from 1984 to GIFTS FROM THE SEA. Throughout, Schwalbe tells stories from his life and focuses on the way certain books can help us honor those we've loved and lost, and also figure out how to live each day more fully.

A British archaeologist --- a member of an expedition gone missing for over two years --- stumbles out of the Egyptian desert. Before he can explain what happened to his team, he dies. But his remains hold a terrifying discovery that only deepens the mystery: something had begun mummifying his body while he was still alive. Commander Grayson Pierce of Sigma Force is tasked with uncovering the truth behind the brutal murder and discovering the fate of the missing team. He and his allies must confront a danger that will unleash a cascading series of plagues around the globe, culminating in a scourge that could kill all of the world’s children…and forever end mankind’s future.

In the mid-19th century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or “human computers,” to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The “glass universe” of half a million plates that Harvard amassed over the ensuing decades enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim.

Christine Steinmeyer thought the anonymous suicide note she found in her mailbox on Christmas Eve wasn’t meant for her. But the man calling in to her radio show seems convinced otherwise. Bit by bit, her life is turned upside down. Martin Servaz is on leave in a clinic for depressed cops, haunted by his childhood sweetheart’s kidnapping by his psychopathic nemesis. One day, he receives a key card to a hotel room --- the room where an artist committed suicide a year earlier. Servaz soon uncovers evidence of a truly terrifying crime. Could someone really be cruelly, consciously hounding women to death?

Baptiste Molino has devoted his life to other people’s happiness. Moored on his houseboat, he helps his clients navigate the waters of contentment, whilst remaining careful never to make waves of his own. Unlike those who come to him for help, Baptiste is more concerned with his past than his future: particularly the mysterious circumstances of his birth and the identity of his birth mother. However Baptiste’s new client, Amandine Rousseau, is fast becoming a puzzle he longs to solve and  may end up being the one to change his perspective. And when his mother’s legacy finally reveals itself he finds himself torn between pursuing his own happiness and safeguarding that of the one he loves.

In 1994, Marko Novak’s world is torn apart by the death of his best friend, Kemal, a young soldier in the darkest days of the Bosnian war. After the funeral, Marko flees to England, hoping to put his broken homeland, and the part he played in the loss of his friend, behind him. In 2004, human rights researcher Anya Teal is following a tenuous lead in the hunt for a Bosnian man with blood on his hands. What nobody knows is that a disaster as destructive as a war is approaching, detonated in the seabed of the Indian Ocean, one that will connect the fates of Marko, William, and Anya, across the years and continents. In its wake, everything Marko thought he knew will be overturned.